Are my lifts out of whack?

[Crash]

I understand the idea that your deadlift should be your strongest lift followed by the squat, then bench and powercleans should be pretty close to the same, then the press should be your weakest lift. (please correct me if I'm wrong)

And such is the case with me. However just looking at other peoples logs and lift ratio's I'm wondering is something still out of whack. Several times now I've seen people's bench PR's and Press PR'S that are about the same as mine but their dead's and squats might be as much as 100lbs more then mine. here are my current working lifts (my 3x5's not 1RM)

Deadlift, 245lbs 1x5
Squat, 235lbs 3x5
Bench, 170lbs 3x5
press, 110lbs 3x5
Chin ups, Mabey 2 with body weight

does this seem normal?

I'm a 23 year old male 221lbs. I've gained about 15 lbs since starting, "starting strength" forsure some fat and some muscle. I've been trying to stick to the program as strictly as possible however life has prevented me from getting in every single workout, I have missed a few here and there unfortunatly. I've never been very lean in my entire adult life or teens. Just a guess I'm around 25%bf. they past few years I've bounced around between 190 and 205. This is the heavest I've ever been. Also I've never been good at chin ups, I can't do more then mabey 1 or 2 full range chin-ups with good form.

[yorick]

I think some of that has to do with many people coming to the program with a lot of previous bench experience, which sort of carries over to strength in the press. So, their bench didn't necessarily gain as much in proportion to their squats and deads.

How long have you been doing the program?

[Carlos Daniel]

The squat and dead might be low now, but they progress much faster.

[ColoWayno]

Yep, your numbers look fine. Things will balance out as you could probably figure out from what yorick and Carlos' said.

[gzt]

All your numbers are weak.

I suppose your bench is less pathetic than the others. It's about proportionate to the press. The deadlift might mean you're potentially squatting high or slacking on the deadlift, but you can't really draw that conclusion.

Don't worry, though, they'll all quickly go up.

[williamlexcrawford]

On the chin ups you should try upping the volume. If you are supposed to do three sets to failure you'll only end up doing 6 chin ups a workout or 12 a week in starting strength. That's not really a lot to illicit much improvement. If you can only do 2 chin-ups, just do sets of 1, but a lot of them. Set a goal for how many you want to do in a workout and just do 1 between the sets of your other exercises.

Since there are no other similar movements in the program you can do a set of any of your main movements and then walk over and do a chin up. Just try to add on a couple of sets of one rep until you're doing a stupid amount of single set pull ups and then go to sets of two or three.

It sounds sort of silly but the extra volume without going to failure really helps. Jim Wendler is where I got this from so that should add some credibility to the method.

[Ardek]

If you're not done with SS and linear progression yet, then by the end of it you will be fine (and you will no longer have people like gzt saying you are weak). You didn't say how long you've been doing the program, but those seem to be solid numbers assuming you have more LP to go, more weight to gain, and you haven't even been getting to every workout. Also everyone is slightly different and you may just happen to be stronger in some areas than others.

I personally didn't get much higher than that at a weight of 195, but I did the program extremely poorly back then.

[gzt]

I just want to reiterate that they will all quickly go up! 200/300/400/500 is still weak in the grand scheme of things, and I'm still chasing a couple of those (I have no idea why, but my upper body is girly).

[Róbert Kovács]

I just want to reiterate that they will all quickly go up! 200/300/400/500 is still weak in the grand scheme of things, and I'm still chasing a couple of those (I have no idea why, but my upper body is girly).

Well those numbers still put you in the top 1 percent of the population strength-vise, so I wouldn't call that weak.

[dsp]

Numbers look just fine..

It's weird that with linear progression, I look at a guy doing a 225 bench or 3 wheel deadlifts, and I think "pfft, this guy is only x weeks ahead of me, and he's probably been training for over a year."

I'm just happy I stumbled on SS, and the most efficient way of evolving from a pussy.